What should we make of the Ansys earnings announcement? In case you missed it, Ansys reported record revenue and profitability for Q4 2012. Revenue was up to $221M for the quarter and operating earnings were 37%.

Participants in the simulation market are doing well because the market is being driven larger by a few important trends:

1. Simulation is getting easier. Some level of simulation is included or easily added on to every major CAD platform.

2. Simulation has always been important for design iterations before prototyping. Higher end computing power on the desktop has made that increasingly accessible.

3. Multiphysics engines bring more value to simulation by allowing users to consider, for example, stress and thermal simulations at the same time.

This is all good news for design engineers. The more work that can be done before prototyping, the more robust designs will be.